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Copyright, 1916, by 
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New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street 



nec 21 1916 

©CI.A453274 



TO 



Jn^Y acquaintance with Mr. 
JLIU Riley began by correspond- 
ence. I began it. A ridiculously 
young editor, with soaring ambitions 
and the least money imaginable, I 
was gravely trying to conduct the 
literary departments of a Chicago 
weekly. I had a yearly allowance 
for my editorial purchases, and so 
long as I kept within that sum I 
was permitted to have whatever my 
eighteen-year-old tastes dictated and 
my purse would buy. 

I decided to have a Riley poem. 
To this end I skimped and saved 
until I had amassed the staggering 
sum of ^twenty-five dollars, which, 
without any preliminary negotia- 
tions, I sent to Mr. Riley with a 
7 



REMINISCENCES OF 

polite note requesting twenty-five 
dollars worth of his very best poetry. 
I had no idea of the temerity of 
my request. That twenty-five-dol- 
lar check looked big enough to me 
to buy "In Memoriam" or "Para- 
dise Lost." 

I got the poem. How many hun- 
dreds of dollars many another editor 
would gladly have paid for that 
poem I am now ashamed to think. 
But I wasn't ashamed then. I 
didn't know enough. 

I was appreciative, though; and 
while Mr. Riley was no stranger 
to appreciation, he doubtless liked 
it as well as we all do. So, what 
with the passing back and forth 
of proof (Mr. Riley was a most 
punctilious reader of proof) and 
grateful acknowledgments, and so 
on, our correspondence began. 

In June following that Christmas 
when I proudly presented my readers 
8 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

with a Riley poem filling an entire 
page, there came to me from the 
poet an urgent invitation to go 
down to Winona Lake, Indiana, to 
attend the annual sessions of the 
Western Writers' Association. 

Who started this society I do 
not know, nor have I any idea if 
it is still in existence. But if it 
continues, it must be so different 
from the Association I knew, that 
I may, perhaps, be pardoned for 
writing of it in the past tense. It 
had its genesis in a day before the 
Indiana School of fiction was famed; 
in a day when editors and publishers 
had not yet begun to court the 
Middle West; when many persons 
who ought doubtless to have known 
better, still felt they must have their 
heroes tailored on Broadway, their 
heroines costumed on Fifth Avenue, 
and who tuned their very lyres to 
sing about New England's coast. 



REMINISCENCES OF 

The readiness and heartiness with 
which James Whitcomb Riley would 
respond to an invitation from per- 
sons wishing to associate with West- 
ern writers can be imagined. No one 
needs to be told how earnest he 
was in his belief that literature 
should be indigenous; that it should 
chronicle and illumine the things 
its writers knew best. He was, to 
quote his own words, "the first 
of ten or fifteen vice-presidents" of 
the Association. He not only at- 
tended its sessions, but he brought 
to them a great many persons of 
distinguished literary achievement, 
who met the members and addressed 
them from the platform and who 
served still another purpose: they 
gave Mr. Riley fellowship and some 
brief respites from the palpitating 
poets and poetesses, who lurked 
in every clump of shrubbery to 
waylay him and read to him, as 
10 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

he ruefully said, "peach-baskets full 
o' poetry." Every muse of the 
corn-belt carried the year's product 
to Winona, and each one hoped to 
read the whole output to Mr. Riley. 
I am afraid that of the persons 
who were seriously working in a 
way to bring honor to Western 
writers, very few went to those 
sessions at Winona Lake unless Mr. 
Riley energetically rounded them 
up and drove them there. And 
most of the voluntary attendants 
were rather pathetic. But Mr. Riley 
was marvellously patient and kind. 
And I think I understand now, as 
I did not then, how he felt about 
those plaintive pipings; how he 
valued them, not for what they 
were about to confer on a waiting 
world, but for what he knew it 
meant to those various persons to 
sing or to create unrestricted worlds 
of fancy and desire. 
11 



REMINISCENCES OF 

I went to Winona Lake, which is 
some three and a half hours' ride 
from Chicago; my train reached 
there about 6 :30, when nearly every- 
body was at supper. Mr. Riley 
was at the little railway station, 
and he seemed to be looking for 
someone; but that it could be for 
me did not occur to me. I was 
hot and grimy, and Mr. Frank 
Marshall, a friend whom I had met 
on the train, had warned me to 
hurry if I wanted any supper. So 
I did not discover myself to the 
poet, but made all haste to the 
hotel. 

After a quick wash and freshening 
up, I went down to supper, to join 
me at which Mr. Marshall had 
very kindly waited. When we 
passed the desk in the office, Mr. 
Riley was scanning the register, 

Mr. Marshall and I had the 
dining-room to ourselves, and our 
12 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

seats were more than half-way down 
the long room, facing the door. 
Shortly after we had begun to eat 
our supper, I saw Mr. Riley come 
to the door and look in. Presently 
a bell-boy came and whispered some- 
thing in Mr. Marshall's ear. The 
answer was, "Yes, it is"; and a 
minute later Mr. Riley was walking 
down the long center aisle of the 
dining-room, his face lighted with 
the peculiarly winning expression I 
came to know so well as the pre- 
cursor of his quaint drolleries — the 
expression Sargent has immortalized 
in his portrait of Riley. 

Not a word did the poet say to 
me by way of introduction: just 
looked at me with eyes that were 
dancing with whimsical humor; 
then, in that drawl of his which can 
never be described, much less repro- 
duced on paper, he demanded: 
"Where are your corkscrew curls?" 
13 



REMINISCENCES OF 

There had been nothing in those 
solemn letters of mine to prepare 
him for the chit of a thing who 
answered to my name; and the 
disparity between his preconception 
of me and the individual I turned 
out to be amused him more than 
a little. His mental picture of me 
had been that of a very spinsterly 
middle-aged Presbyterian person, 
whose lack of acquaintance with 
the world was pathetically evident — 
just the one to revel in those peach- 
baskets full of poetry! He ad- 
mitted that his disappointment was 
acute. But he made the best of 
it and did not allow me to feel too 
chagrined. 

There were programs every day, 
several of them — morning, after- 
noon, and evening — all designed to 
be very improving to persons who 
did not care who made the nation's 
laws but sought for themselves the 
14 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

higher responsibility of making the 
nation's songs. Sometimes we 
attended these; but I am afraid 
that oftener we played hookey. 

Mr. Riley's respect for the ear- 
nestness displayed in those programs 
was genuine and, in a way, profound. 
But also he could not help knowing 
how funny they were. I recall one 
young school teacher from a small 
Indiana town who had either been 
assigned or had chosen for her 
theme, "French Novels"; which, 
ever was true, it was more incred- 
ible than the other could have been. 
It was a season of organdies, and 
this nice girl, who was Irish, and 
as modest as perhaps only a sweet 
Irish maid can be, was a-flutter 
with pale-blue organdie, ruffled and 
ribboned in the very best style of 
the local modiste. She was scared, 
too — not only because it was an 
awesome thing to be reading a 
15 



REMINISCENCES OF 

paper before the Western Writers' 
Association, but because the sub- 
ject was so risque. She began by 
saying, earnestly, that she hoped no 
one present would think she had 
ever read any French novels. And 
then she told us all about them 
that a nice girl could impart to 
her literary confreres. 

Another speaker who gave us 
great delight was a very tall, very 
slender, very superior youth, whom 
we called "the Kipling stripling." 
He had just discovered "Barrack 
Room Ballads," and he told about 
them with an air Columbus might 
have worn but probably did not 
when telling Queen Isabella what 
he had found overseas. Mr. Riley 
made some delicious pencil sketches 
of this missioner, which I ought 
to have in some dust-laden box or 
other. 

I don't mean to affirm that all 
16 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the papers were as funny as these, 
nor to deny that we should not 
have liked them better if they had 
been. Most of them were as deadly 
dull as "papers' 5 usually are. So, 
as unostentatiously as possible, we 
sat down by the lake's reedy marge 
and talked of shoes and ships and 
sealing-wax, or cabbages and kings, 
or went on truant trips to Warsaw, 
two miles or so away, a gay metrop- 
olis where one could purchase exe- 
crable soda water and much worse 
candy, and lead a lurid life far 
from the culture-craving crowd. 

Once, at Warsaw, milder amuse- 
ments having palled, we sought a 
secluded spot — I think it was on 
the court-house lawn — and indulged 
in a game of mumbledy-peg, whereat 
the poet was amazing proficient. 
He was executing some breath-taking 
stunt in this and doing it with a 
gusto that "Buddy" Riley could 
17 



REMINISCENCES OF 

never have outmatched in his best 
Greenfield days, when he was rec- 
ognized by a Warsaw admirer. 
Well! As for me,T[ couldn't see that 
the admirer was to be pitied that 
glimpse, probably his only one, of 
the author of "Little Orphant 
Annie " and "The Raggedy Man." 
But Mr. Riley seemed to think it 
left something to be desired in the 
manner of meeting a poet. "May 
never meet another, you know," 
he complained comically, "and it's 
likely to color all his ideas of poets. 
Too bad!" I think we bought a 
watermelon to revive our drooping 
self-respect. But I remember that 
it used to be no small problem to 
sit by the side of a road and eat a 
watermelon with dignity. And just 
as surely as we dispensed with the 
dignity, out of an adjacent corn- 
stalk or hollow stump would rise 
as by magic some one saying: 
18 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

"Oh! there's James Whitcomb 
Riley!" 

He was one of the very few literary 
persons this country has produced 
who was almost universally rec- 
ognized when he walked abroad. 
I am not sure that even Mark 
Twain was so generally known — at 
least not before he began wearing 
white suits. Most writers come and 
go unnoticed by their fellowmen, 
unless they, if they are male, hap- 
pen to resemble a popular prize- 
fighter or, if they are female, a 
favorite actress. But Riley was sure 
to be known and acclaimed, any- 
where he went. And while he appre- 
ciated the interest people had in 
him, he was not inconsiderably irked 
by it, ofttimes. As, for instance, 
when I went with him once into a 
"gents' furnishing store," in a small 
Indiana town, the proprietor de- 
lightedly recognized his customer. 
19 



REMINISCENCES OF 

"The las 5 time I see Mr. Riley/' 
lie confided to me, "was when he 
was a right young fella. He painted 
me a sign. I got it yet — wouldn't 
take any money fer it. Like to 
see it?" 

I had heard a great deal about 
that phase of Mr. Riley's youth 
when he ran away from home and 
the study of law, and supported 
himself in his errantry by painting 
store-signs. So I thanked the 
"gents' furnisher" and said I should 
be glad indeed to see his treasure. 

He produced it: an odd little 
specimen of fancy lettering, in bright 
blue. 

"I 'member," the proud possessor 
said, "like it was yesterday, the 
day that sign was painted. Mr. 
Riley wore kid gloves while he 
was paintin' it." 

At this point Mr. Riley vanished. 
When I rejoined him, half a block 
20 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

away, he was fuming and fulminating 
in his own peculiar, picturesque 
style, 

"The large, gentlemanly pearl- 
gray ass!" he cried. "He dreamed 
that fantasy on some dark, moon- 
less night, and he has told it so 
many times that he has made 
himself believe it. Why, a man 
couldn't paint with kid gloves on!" 

I remember asking for illumination 
about the pearl-gray variety of ass. 

"Don't know much about asses, 
do you?" he replied. 

I admitted that I didn't. 

"Well," he said, "a pearl-gray ass 
is one that has been an ass a long, 
long time." 

He had a multitude of such ex- 
pressions. I recollect his saying a 
man had "hard-boiled eyes," and 
describing a certain woman's mouth 
as "like a stab in the dark." 



21 



REMINISCENCES OF 



n 

^*HE June days at Winona Lake 
^U were pleasant; but the even- 
ings were memorable indeed. 

There was a small "ordinary 55 off 
the main dining-room, and there we 
were wont to gather — four, six, in- 
frequently more of us — and banquet 
splendidly on crackers and cheese, 
pickles, sweet chocolate, and cold 
tea, I have sat at many a table, 
since, with the keenest and most 
charming personages of my day; 
but I have never heard talk so fas- 
cinating. 

Mr. Riley was always the dom- 
inating spirit, his mood the key 
in which our pleasure was pitched. 
His sensibility to the moods of 
others was, at times like those, 
extraordinary; he seemed to know 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

infallibly when everybody was in 
time and tune, and when some one 
was ever so little off key. In the 
latter event he would keep the con- 
versation within the safe bounds of 
jocularity. He had to feel perfectly 
assured before he would venture 
upon any seriousness. 

There was one evening when we 
were but four at table: Mr, Riley, 
Mr. Frank L. Stanton, the Atlanta 
poet, Mrs. Whipple — a little lady 
into whose chaperonage Mr. Riley 
had consigned me immediately upon 
his discovery of my disconcert- 
ing youth — and I. Mr. Stanton's 
mind is an inexhaustible store-house 
of great poetry, which he recites 
beautifully. Out under the trees 
that silvery June night, he had re- 
peated, on Mr. Riley's continued 
urging, poem after poem. His mem- 
ory is particularly rich in Shake- 
speare; and, bit by bit as the talk 



REMINISCENCES OF 

ran on, he illumined it with snatches 
of this immortal scene and of that. 

Just how the talk proceeded from 
Shakespeare to Mrs. Browning, I 
do not recall, but it was an easy 
progress. Mr. Riley considered 
Mrs. Browning's mind the most 
exquisite that had expressed itself 
in poetry since Shakespeare. At 
any rate, we were talking of her 
when we went indoors; and I, who 
had my thumbed and much-marked 
copy of her poems with me, went 
to my room and fetched it. 

We had our bite to eat, still 
talking of her, and there came up 
the old, old subject of how much 
an artist must have lived and suf- 
fered in order to express himself 
with passion and authority. Mr. 
Riley said it was a matter not of 
extensity but of intensity: that in 
going to the depths of one great 
human emotion one reaches a point 
U 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

of sympathetic understanding where 
all profound emotions become com- 
prehensible. 

In illustration of this he began to 
read from my copy of Mrs. Browning. 
First he read "Bianca Among the 
Nightingales/ 5 and oh, how he read 
it! His was truly a golden voice, 
comparable to none other that I 
have ever heard in man; it had 
extraordinary flexibility and intense, 
quiet passion. 

As he read the ravings of poor, 
jealousy-mad Bianca, there was such 
wildness of pain in his tones as 
made us who listened ache with 
almost unendurable anguish. Then 
he read "The Runaway Slave at 
Pilgrim's Point," and our tears 
flowed unrestrained. 

"You see?" he said. "Having 

plumbed the deeps, in one great 

emotional experience, that little bit 

of a bed-ridden English woman was 

25 



REMINISCENCES OF 

equally capable of comprehending 
the hot jealousy of a passionate 
Italian girl raving for her faithless 
lover, and the wild agony of a black 
mother torn from her child. Yet 
she had never even seen a black 
woman. Below a certain depth 
all suffering is sympathetic/' 

On another night, Hector Fuller 
was a member of our little group. 
He was at that time literary and 
dramatic critic of the Indianapolis 
News, and Mr. Riley found much 
pleasure in his companionship. An 
Englishman by birth and a cos- 
mopolite by experience, Mr. Fuller 
has a rich emotional nature, a 
broad and deep acquaintance with 
life and with letters. It was one 
of the absurdities of editorial par- 
simony that, as if reviewing all 
the new books and all the plays 
were not enough work for any one 
man, or any two, for that matter, 
26 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Mr. Fuller must needs conduct a 
column of questions and answers, 
wherein superannuated subscribers 
might ask a multitude of futile 
questions about "A says So-and-So 
is right. B insists that it is Thus- 
and-So. Please settle dispute." One 
of Mr. Riley's pastimes was to 
think up the most preposterous 
queries, and write them to the 
News in a feigned hand; or, when 
in company with Mr. Fuller, to 
sit pondering things to propound 
to him. As, for example, with face 
serious, innocent, questioning: "Ful- 
ler, which has the sanction of the 
best literary usage — them molasses, 
or those molasses?" And so on. 

Mr. Riley loved to "play pretend" 
as much as any child of whom he 
ever wrote. Something so struck 
his fancy, on one evening when 
Mr. Fuller was with us, as to make 
him recognize in Fuller an erst- 
27 



REMINISCENCES OF 

while butler, Tompkins, who had 
stolen his master's good clothes 
and gone masquerading as a gentle- 
man. Without a second's hesita- 
tion, Mr. Fuller pleaded guilty to 
being indeed Tompkins, begged for 
mercy, and, having been pardoned 
the theft, rose from his seat and 
resumed "butlering." 

He is a mime of rare ability; I 
do not know whether he had, at 
any time in his varied career, ex- 
perience on the stage; but he has 
not only the appearance of an able 
histrion, but the gifts of one. His 
mien, his manner, as Tompkins, 
made the characterization as artistic, 
in its way, as Mr. Gillette's butler 
in "The Admirable Crichton." 

Tompkins' "gentleman" (Mr. Ri- 
ley) was, it seemed, the Honorable 
E. Harold Ashby of Hightowers, 
Newby, Scrapshire, England; and 
I was Lady Glendower. 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Our food, elegantly "butlered," 
was of the same Warsaw grocery 
store, paper-bag variety; but the 
service was distinguished, and the 
occasion had an air of exclusive 
English aristocracy, except that, in 
spite of our heroic efforts at aris- 
tocratic suppression, we were far 
merrier than any supper party of 
English aristocrats I have ever known 
or "heard tell of." Tompkins had 
lapses of dignity, forgetful moments 
when he joined in the conversation. 
But his quick resumption of the 
Tompkins air, on the Honorable 
Ashby's incensed reminder, was such 
clever playing that I am afraid some 
of us may have encouraged him to 
forget his place. 

I find a letter dated several years 
later, which begins: 

" Dear Lady Glexdower: 

I go at once with your message to 
Tompkins, who, I learn, has taken service 
29 



REMINISCENCES OF 

with some titled personage on the staff 
of one of our daily papers here, and I 
hasten to assure your Excellency that, 
even though a serving man, Tompkins 
is a most loyal adherent of your Ladyship's 
cause wherever cast, and I have the honor 
to forecast your faithful servant's continued 
fealty to any claim upon his services that 
it might please your Ladyship, through me, 
to designate to the worthy rascal." 

Mr. John Curtis, secretary of 
the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Mr. 
Riley's publishers, was very often 
a member of these supper-table 
groups, and always entered with 
delightful spirit into the occasion, 
whether grave or gay. Mr. Riley 
had a warm affection for Mr. Cur- 
tis, whom he nevertheless teased 
with rare unction. Another friend 
of the poet, who came to Winona 
Lake at his behest, was "Bob" 
Burdette. I do not remember hav- 
ing seen Mr. Riley in the company 
of any other man who more perfectly 
30 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

evoked the personality of Riley or 
more richly responded to it. When 
they were together, what one didn't 
think of, t'other did. 

There was an evening, during that 
first visit of mine to Winona, when 
our supper party included Mr. Riley, 
Mr. Burdette, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Wil- 
liam E. English of Indianapolis, 
Mrs. Whipple, and me. Mr. Riley's 
brother-in-law and sister, Mr. and 
Mrs. Henry Eitel, may have been 
there, and the poet's other sister, 
Mary Riley Payne. I am not sure. 
But I remember the menu, perfectly. 
It was: cracknels, leathery American 
cheese, German sweet chocolate, a 
kind of sweet pickled cauliflower — 
out of a barrel in the Warsaw gro- 
cery — and a very thin lemonade, 
which Mr. Riley made and for which 
we had only three lemons. But 
Mr. English, who has sat at many 
tables where the nation's cleverest 
31 



REMINISCENCES OF 

talk is supposed to flow, said he 
had never heard, anywhere, the 
equal of the table talk that night. 
That fall Mr. Riley wrote me: 

" Mr. Burdette was here two days ago — 
from here went to Chicago, where he was 
to meet Mr. Curtis. By this they've 
called upon you, doubtless, as Mr. B. told 
me he meant to write some Christmas 
verse for you. Wish it had been possible 
for me to have gone with the lovely man — 
then I know you'd V saw him. Speakin' 
o' language, do you recall the inspired blind 
wood-sawyer's lines? — 

' He was a sawyer — blind from birth, 
Tho' otherwise without a flaw, — 

While no one ever saw him see, 
Many have seen him saw.' " 



32 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



III 

♦fTN the winter following my first 
■■ visit to Winona, I went down 
to Southern Indiana to spend a 
week-end with Mrs, Whipple/ who 
lives in Rockville, near Terre Haute. 
On Monday morning we took an 
early train — oh, a very early train; 
at six o'clock, or thereabouts — for 
Indianapolis, where I had never 
been. Mr. Curtis met us at the 
depot (Mr. Riley loathed trains, 
depots, and — as he would have said 
— "all appurtenances thereof") and 
escorted us to the Denison Hotel, 
where he left us, saying that he 
and Mr. Riley would call at one 
o'clock to take us to luncheon. 

Mr. Riley was very proud of 
Indianapolis. He loved the spirit 
that characterized it in those days. 



REMINISCENCES OF 

He revelled in its homeliness (I 
use the word as the English do, and 
not as we prostitute it) and its 
standards of aristocracy and democ- 
racy. He told me, rhapsodically, 
how ex-Presidents and Vice-Pres- 
idents of , these United States, 
might be seen, daily, on the beau- 
tiful, broad, superbly shaded resi- 
dence streets of Indianapolis, jog- 
ging downtown in the back-seat 
of the modest family surrey, driven 
by the colored man-of-all-work, 
and bound for the big market to 
select chickens and fresh vegetables, 
before going to their law offices. 
He told me how, at evening gath- 
erings in those fine, old-fashioned 
homes where the best of everything 
was cultivated and appreciated, one 
might meet a young lady who had 
that day sold one something over a 
counter downtown. He believed 
that Indianapolis was a city where 
34 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

gentleness and fineness of spirit, 
of mind, rated one — not money in 
bank, or opulent possessions. I am 
afraid he felt some changes before 
he died. But in those days, at any 
rate, it was as fine-flavored a com- 
munity as one could wish to be in. 

Mr. Riley expatiated on this, as 
we set forth from the Denison that 
cold winter noonday, to go to lunch. 
I was interested,] of course; but I 
had breakfasted about five, and I 
had another interest which was — 
I may as well confess — paramount 
just then. 

After we had walked about the 
snowy streets for some time, we 
halted and Mr. Riley and Mr. Cur- 
tis debated where they would take 
us to lunch. TVe listened politely, 
but hoped it was nearby. Their 
argument grew spirited, then acri- 
monious. At length they com- 
promised on some place, and we 
35 



REMINISCENCES OF 

went thither. On the very threshold 
their disagreement broke out afresh. 
We assured them that we were sure 
this place would do. But, no ! Mr. 
Curtis discovered in himself an un- 
conquerable aversion to it. We re- 
sumed our quest. But the next 
place proved to be one where Mr. 
Riley had been cavalierly treated, 
and he would not have me get my 
first impression of Indianapolis there. 
I wanted to tell him that no place 
which contained real food would 
impress me as less lovely than the 
very courts of Heaven. But I didn't. 
About two o'clock we halted before 
a tall office-building. The gentle- 
men, who by that time were scarcely 
on speaking terms with one another, 
assured us that the Indianapolis 
Commercial Club had its quarters on 
the top floor of this building, and 
that the club owned a portrait of 
Riley which I might like to see. 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

I have never been less eager to see 
any portrait; but we went up to 
the Commercial Club. We discussed 
the portrait. I mean, somebody dis- 
cussed it; I am sure I didn't. 

Finally, Mr. Riley said: " Perhaps 
you're hungry?" 

I pleaded guilty. Thereupon Mr. 
Curtis disappeared, to see if we 
could get lunch at the club. He 
came back from his tour of inquiry 
and reported that while the regular 
luncheon was over, we could get 
a cold "snack." By that time I 
was reconciled to anything that could 
even optimistically be called food. 
So we repaired to one of the private 
dining-rooms — where we found a per- 
fect bower of American Beauty roses, 
and a luncheon which had been 
ordered days before and included 
every delicacy in and out of season. 

We sat there until six p.m. I 
cannot definitely recall any of Mr. 
37 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Riley's table talk that day. But 
I remember that two colored waiters 
were in attendance, and so great 
was their delight in Mr. Riley's 
stories that neither of them was 
willing to leave the room to fetch 
a new course from the kitchen, an 
argument which promised to be- 
come at any moment a "scrap/' 
ensuing each time the necessity 
arose. 

Afterwards I went often to Indian- 
apolis, and had many memorable 
times. Usually I stayed with Mr. 
Riley's elder sister, Mrs. Eitel, a 
rarely lovely woman who idolized 
her brother Jim and never tired 
telling me stories of his boyhood. 
We made several excursions to 
Greenfield, the little town twenty 
miles or so from Indianapolis where 
the poet and his brothers and sisters 
were born and grew to adult years. 

To visit Greenfield with the 
38 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

Rileys was an event indeed. We 
went to their old home, which 
sits back from the National Road 
along which the picturesque prairie 
schooners used to pass with Em- 
pire's westering star, while Buddy 
Riley hung on the gate watching 
them out of wondering big blue 
eyes. We saw "Th' Ole Swimmin' 
Hole"; walked "Up and Down 
Old Brandywine"; called upon the 
apple-cheeked, sweet-souled old gen- 
tleman, Captain Lee O. Harris, 
who hadjbeen Jim Riley's school- 
teacher; and took due note of the 
schoolhouse where Riley, like the 
bard of Stratford, got not only 
his first principles of learning, but 
also his first taste of the drama's 
delights. It was there, he told me, 
that he saw his first play, "The 
Corsican Brothers." The rapture 
of that occasion left an ineffaceable 
memory. Years later he saw Henry 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Irving in the same play. He sat 
in Irving's own box at the Lyceum 
Theatre in London, but he found 
the play "strangely altered/' and 
for the worse, despite Irving's talents 
as player and producer. 

, That Greenfield did not suffice to 
hold Jim Riley was not to be won- 
dered at; but he always loved it 
tenderly, and I am sure he was 
much gratified by the way it loved 
him. 

Among his townsfolk, two who 
particularly engaged his interest 
were Mr. Will Vawter, an artist, 
and his sister, Miss Clara Vawter, 
a delicate, sweet girl with a mind 
rich in pretty whimsies and quaint 
child-lore. 

Mr. Riley encouraged Miss Vawter 
to write. And in a letter to me 
he says: 

"... Just now I've another glory for 
you, — a bran'-new, shore-fer-certain Child- 
40 



JAMES WH ITCOMB RILEY 

^ m m wm ^ mt m ^ ^ m m ^ mmm m — — — — mm mm m m mm u m amm m tm mm m mm ^^ m am ^ m ^ m mmm ^ mmmm 

author — or, rather, a truly gifted writer of 
children and for them. In proof of which 
I proudly enclose a sketch by Miss Clara 
Vawter — a young sister of the artist ^f my 
last book. And now I want you not only 
to be rejoiced over this deliciously original 
and wholesome little story, but to send its 
most deserving author an c appreciation ' 
— only, don't use that word — they've over- 
worked it, East, so the sweat fairly stands 
out on its furr'ed! — What a joy and what 
a help it will be to her! Possibly you may 
have met her at my sister's. If so, you'll 
not have forgotten her. Indeed you should 
know each other steadfastly. Do send her 
a cheery hail." 

And when I gladly complied, he 
wrote : 

" Oh, I knew our Genius would appre- 
ciate a hail from you. Her letter is purt' 
nigh so good I don't know which of you 
ort to feel most proudest of th' other'n! 
There's where such real letters as you can't 
help writing aren't wasted — and I do want 
you two signed friends for all your blessed 
literary lives. I have only mainly known 
41 



REMINISCENCES OF 

her as a child, and now — while it's a be- 
wildering thing to realize — she is a brilliant 
young woman every way, save, I fear, 
in promise of robust health. That, how- 
ever, might be a condition happily bettered 
by cheery, wholesome friends and their 
heartening influence and advice. Not that 
I gather an impression of a melancholy 
temperament or tendency — but the con- 
trary, — so that sound health, to her, 
would be more the result of wholesome 
mental food than that of the bread-and- 
butter variety. Lord! how I'd like, just 
now, to be a glitteringly keen and subtle- 
minded, diplomatic C. E. L.! Then what 
a lovely, lovable task were mine of develop- 
ing this like gifted sister — and how proud 
I'd be of the prompt result of that gracious 
interest, seeing her surely coming into 
her own. . . . But here! I'm not only 
preaching but writing you a letter. For- 
give both, and know always I mean better 
than I do." 

It was my personal happiness and 
editorial good fortune to publish in 
our weekly a number of Miss Vaw- 
ter's stories of children, which were 

42 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

soon thereafter collected between 
covers and brought out as a book. 

" Have seen Miss Vawter's prospective 
book," Mr. Riley wrote me, " very beau- 
tiful in type press and paper, — also her 
brother's design for cover, no less superb, 
alluring and original. . . . Did you name 
the book? It sounds so, as it's a happy 
title. Mr. Eitel tells me they hear from 
her and that she writes cheerily of her being 
improved and of final recovery, which, pray 
God, will be brought about." 

But she went Away — that sweet- 
hearted, brave-souled girl. I am 
rich in a score of charming memo- 
ries of her, which I must not narrate 
here, since these are reminiscences 
of her friend and mine. But one 
little flash of her spirit is so like 
him as well as like her, that I will 
give it. We had gone to a "show" 
given by some children, a sort of 
"Billy Miller's Circus Show" such 
as Riley wrote about. At the en- 
43 



REMINISCENCES OF 

trance we were told that admission 
for two would be ten pins. Miss 
Vawter and I could not muster 
that number — not even by being 
reckless of consequences. "Could 
you/ 5 she earnestly asked the door- 
keeper, "could you change a hat- 
pin?" He was not sure what the 
current rate of exchange for hat- 
pins was; but after some grave 
consultation about it, we were ad- 
mitted. 

I ventured, about that time, to 
ask Mr. Riley's opinion of some 
verses written by a friend of mine. 
This girl had had a pretty severe 
struggle against poverty and other 
adverse circumstances. She wrote 
well enough so that it seemed a 
great pity she should not write 
better. Dr. John Finley, then pres- 
ident of Knox College, made it pos- 
sible for this girl to go there, at 
no expense, for a special course in 
44 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

studies she needed. And it was 
my happiness to help her get to- 
gether a wardrobe suitable for col- 
lege life; some articles of this modest 
outfit had been mine, and to a cer- 
tain woman in Galesburg they looked 
far too modish "for a girl every- 
body knows is here on charity." 
The remarks of this woman so 
stung the sensitive spirit of my 
friend that she was of a mind to 
flee Galesburg and forego all that 
Knox College offered her. I thought 
that if I could assure her Mr. Riley 
found her talent worthy, she would 
stay and endure the unjust crit- 
icism of her clothes. I explained 
the situation to the poet, who re- 
plied as follows: 

" Truly you deserve all praise and wor- 
ship for your righteous championship of 
the gifted girl. Her poetry is genuine — 
both the serious and dialect. Only, she 
must not be celebrating herself (indirectly) 
45 



REMINISCENCES OF 

as she seems to be doing. If her present 
position be such as to hamper her inde- 
pendence, let her accept the condition 
thankfully — not combat it petulantly. In 
other words, let her give the true evidence 
of][her divine endowments by cheerfully- 
taking what the gods allow — smiling at 
the small measure, but not conceitedly. 
It seems to me, had I, as she, the large, 
gentlemanly, arrogant, pearl-gray-ass-of-a- 
woman in ostensible charge of my immortal 
soul, that I'd simply have fun with her by 
seeming to be influenced and controlled 
by her. That's the way to extract her 
fangs and render her utterly harmless. 
Of course, with all the fervor of my heart 
I damn such a woman and wonder at God's 
lapse-evident in her creation — but only 
let our genius think how she herself has 
escaped being such a personality — giving, 
thrusting upon God her thanks by the hand- 
ful! 

" This morning I couldn't write — as I so 
wanted — knowing and fully sympathizing 
with the spirit of your last, and its enclos- 
ure. Spare yourself all you can, I would 
say, in this regard. We all have inescapable 
worries, as God means it, — but we get 
46 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

1 out o' plumb' assuming those which belong 
to others. We think we help, but, nine 
times out o' ten, we simply hurt. This is 
not a doleful way of looking at things 
— it's a fact. When you are old — as I am 
— then at last — centuries beyond your 
present youth — you will realize the stark, 
bleak fact of this unlovely text. 

* But how shall I write the poet in praise 
of her work, unless she invites my comment? 
Most gladly will I testify in her behalf, 
but think the motive should be sagely 
considered and provided by her. Wouldn't 
the really effective way be for her to ask 
my opinion? Then, with feasible occasion, 
I might offer the same without it seeming 
gratuitous. In any event be assured I 
am yours to command even as you will . . . 
And so, in the face o' the sun by day 

Or the face o' the moon by night, 
I am yours — yours — yours to command 

alway — 
As you shall desire so I shall obey, 
Till you'll be amused and, smiling, say, — 

'Now isn't he polite! '" 



47 



REMINISCENCES OF 



IV 

J||V Y first published book — for I 
JLII*/ had written books since I 
was ten — was a year-book or, as 
it used to be called, a birthday 
book, compiled from Riley's poems. 

"Tennyson's idyl, 'The Golden Year/ 
Mr. Riley wrote, " suggests what seems to 
me a lovely and apt name for your new 
book. Credit, too, for same may be in- 
directly given the master by some stanza 
of his poem to lead off with — as the en- 
closed, for instance, hastily set down last 
night. Get poem and look it over musingly. 
And do agree it's a be-you-tiful title! M 

I did agree. And "The Golden 
Year" it was, and is. For a number 
of months his letters were full of 
allusions to the momentous work; 
if it had been the Century Diction- 
ary or the tenth edition of the En- 
48 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

cyclopaedia Britannica, Mr. Riley 
could not have treated my editor- 
ship with more respect. 

Now it was: " The Golden Year rounds 
on — and is going into ' proofed ' type- 
script ere it's trusted to the printers over- 
seas." 

And so on, until: " Just got sight of 
your new book, and find it so beautiful a 
volume — so fine of dignity and character — 
that I must write you my instant con- 
gratulations. Ah! but the book is ex- 
quisite! " 

But later, the inevitable! " I somewhat 
grimly smile, calling your attention to 
pages 56 and 118, where you've placed one 
and the identical stanza — it was so unearthly 
beautiful! " 

, Nevertheless, I became at once 
his "favorite author/' and so re- 
mained for some years, during which 
I was, as he said, "the sole living 
author whose only book is all about 
me." His letters are addressed 
oftener to "My Dearest F. A.," 
49 



REMINISCENCES OF 

"Dear Author Mine," "Dear My 
Favorite Author/' than in any 
other way. Once it was, " Dear F. 
A. of the Universal World!" pref- 
acing a letter which began: "Now 
you are simply a supernal being, 
beatified in your opulence of grace 
and loveliness. Of course you're 
inspired — c nothink short ! ' I don't 
remember what I had done, but 
it seems to have been something, 
for "two certainly highly gifted 
young people" whom Mr. Riley 
was trying to help unto their own. 

It must have been the valuable 
experience of transcribing so much 
lovely poetry that emboldened me 
to my one and only venture in 
verse. I wrote a birthday sonnet 
to Mr. Riley. This was not re- 
markable — but my temerity in 
sending it to him was. 

"How can I ever answer your last 
letter?" he wrote. "And the poem! I 
50 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

am still dazed with the revelation of this 
peerless gift of Song in your already over- 
brimmed possession, and yet mechanically 
must cry out to you: 

* 'Ware shoal! 'ware shoal! 'ware shoal! ' 
not by any means that it isn't good, but 
that it is." 

Yet, when I inscribed for him 
a copy of "The Golden Year" with 
some of his own lines, he chided me : 

** Why didn't you inscribe it with lines 
of your own verse? which same I know you 
can do with both force and grace. And 
here again I charge you not to neglect your 
serious exercise of that poetic gift, for you 
know not to what high worth it may 
develop in your chosen field of letters — 
indeed, that expression might in time come 
to be your best, — as, see vol. ' In this 
Our World,' by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, — 
a truly c mighty line ' she has just given 
the world, and which I've been trying to 
give you, but the booksellers can't secure 
even one copy of it. If you can do so there 
in Chicago, swoop down upon it with 
wildest beak, talons, and rush of wings! 
51 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Later, some time, then, I may tell you how, 
four or five years ago, I met the then 
unknown poet in Oakland, California, 
where she was one of our happy party 
on a visit to Joaquin Miller, with whose old 
mother and himself we joyously dined. 
So, whatever you do (since I can't) get at 
once a copy of Mrs. Stetson's poems: 
' In This Our World/" 

Two weeks later he urges: " See at once 
splendid character comment in Feb. ' Cur- 
rent Literature 9 of our c Stout Stetson, 
as with eagle-eye she looks on the Pacific/ 
holding the proud World o'er it by the tail! 
Do find where she's to be found and write 
her, and send her address to me." 



52 



l?ri&E5g£ 

JLHE -lW*&t kZ^L trx^i^KA^ Cr/_ <^«**£ , 

ftl+rdfc *U Kt fa ^l1t t A^l ^ ^ 

-^Y ^ ^ ^ **£-* fis ' 

-cJXP 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



+flp*E kept an eager lookout in 
■■•/ those days for the fresh, new 
voices in prose and poetry. It was 
he who sent me the first thing of 
W. B. Yeats' that I ever saw: a 
thin little copy of "The Land of 
Heart's Desire/' bound in gray 
boards; and on the fly-leaf Mr. 
Riley wrote these lines, which are 
so lovely that they cannot be called 
a parody; he called them, in the 
caption, 

" Yatesesque: 
The wind blows over the hills of dawn, 

The wind blows over the heavy of heart — 
And the heavy heart aches on and on, 

While the dancing fairies wheel and part, 

Twirling their star-white feet in a round — 

Waving their moon- white arms in the air, 

Till the low wind leaps, with a laughing 

sound, 



REMINISCENCES OF 

And sings of a land where the old are fair — 
Where the old are fair, and the sad are gay, 

And life lives on, and death is gone — 
Where love and loveliness wear alway, 

And never a heart aches on and on." 

The lines which suggested these 
I give also, that those who care 
to may compare them with Riley's. 
They are the lines sung outside 
Maurteen Bruin's house by the 
faery child before she enters and 
after she leaves. 

" The wind blows out of the gates of the 
day, 
The wind blows over the lonely of heart, 
And the lonely of heart is withered away, 
While the faeries dance in a place apart, 
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring, 
Tossing their milk-white arms in the 
air; 
For they hear the wind laugh and murmur 
and sing 
Of a land where even the old are fair, 
And even the wise are merry of tongue; 
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say, 
54 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

1 When the wind has laughed and mur- 
mured and sung, 
The lonely of heart must wither 
away.' " 

Another author who should have 
done her best to have me shot at 
sunrise or hanged at high noon 
" of a Friday " was Alice French 
(Octave Thanet), from whom I un- 
blushingly beguiled every now and 
then a three hundred or five hun- 
dred dollar story for about four 
dollars and ninety-eight cents. But 
a bigger heart than hers never beat; 
and instead of treating me as I 
deserved, she did me a multitude 
of charming kindnesses, personal 
as well as " professional. 5 ' For in- 
stance, having found much to thrill 
her in W. E. Henley's poems, she 
bought at Scribners', in New York, 
a copy for me, and wrote me that 
it was on the way. When it was 
some time overdue, I told her. 
55 



REMINISCENCES OF 

She ordered a second copy — and 
they both came in one mail. " Send 
the duplicate to anyone who may 
care for it," she directed me. I 
sent it to Mr. Riley, who wrote of it: 

" I don't like the man — the man so greatly 
endowed of God as he, and yet deliberately 
and elaborately crying out against Him 
and His dispensations irks an optimistic 
kuss like me immeasurably: All I most 
marvel at is therefore dubious, — sometimes 
it seems the man's transcendent genius, 
and then it seems God's patience — 

But, anyway, I s'pose, 

' He knows — He knows — HE knows! ' " 

Later, in talking to me about 
Henley, he expressed enormous con- 
trition for that letter. " I didn't 
know, when I wrote it, what he 
has had to fight against, 55 he said, 
humbly. "Good Lord! dying by 
inches in that hideous way! And 
having to see that child die! I 5 m 
sorry I ever said anything. Per- 
56 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

haps if I were in his place I'd cry, 
too, about ' the night that covers 
me, black as the pit from pole to 
pole!' " 

Henley's savage attack on Ste- 
venson was hard for Mr. Riley 
to forgive; but I know he tried 
to feel the situation from Henley's 
side. 

" Both of them physically frail, 
handicapped by almost continual 
suffering," he said; " and yet one 
is worshipped by all the world as 
its apostle of sweet courage, and the 
other wins respect from a few as 
the apostle of grim endurance. I 
think I can understand how Henley 
feels. But it's too bad ! Too bad ! " 

Riley's enthusiasm for Stevenson 
was beautiful. I can remember his 
asking me with great wistfulness 
if I thought Stevenson had ever 
seen anything he (Riley) had written. 
And I know that once, passing a 
57 



REMINISCENCES OF 

theatre in Indianapolis, he was at- 
tracted by the announcement that 
E. J. Henley was playing there. 
Reflecting that this man must have 
had some acquaintance with Steven- 
son, Mr. Riley sought the stage- 
door and sent in his card. His 
mood was that which Browning 
so simply and exquisitely conveyed 
in " Memorabilia": 

" And did you once see Shelley, plain? 
And did he stop and speak to you? 
And did you speak to him again? 
How strange it seems, and new! H 

The actor received Mr. Riley 
graciously, but his grace evanished 
quickly when he learned why his 
visitor had come. 

" Stevenson? " he said, as if he 
recalled only with an effort his 
brother's long-time friend. " Ste- 
venson? Ah, yes — yes! A queer 
person! Liked to wear a velvet 
58 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

coat — and all that sort o' thing, 
don't ye know/' 

That was all. But Mr. Riley 
could never forget it. 

Once he said to me: " Did you 
ever know that until after he was 
grown and mustached Stevenson 
was a blonde? That his hair didn't 
darken until he was past his ma- 
jority? " 

I had not known it; but it 
transpired that he had found a 
portrait of Stevenson which was 
taken when he was almost as fair as 
Riley's flaxen self. 

" I wrote some maundering verses to it," 
— he told me in a letter, afterwards, "nay 
to the lovely man himself — sent picture 
and lines to magazine and publishing 
house, and they wrote to say portrait 
and verses would appear in their Christmas 
magazine, and enclosed a great corpulent 
check which I had not dreamed of in such 
connection — so returned it, coyly saying 
even if I had intended the lines for money, 
59 



REMINISCENCES OF 

their check was in vast excess of their 
worth — but if, in lieu of such sordid com- 
pensation, Robert Louis Stevenson's pub- 
lishers were to send me a set of his books, 
it would seem to me about all the recom- 
pense I could bear. 

"Well, now here's where only a poet can 
humor and account for the doings of 
Divinity: — As I stepped out into the golden 
morning-edge of my very recentest birth- 
day, Robert Louis Stevenson was blithely 
seeing to it that his books were being 
then and there delivered into my hands 
by the expressman who looked and acted 
just for the world as though he were deliver- 
ing the package to me — even made me sign 
something to that effect, I think! " 

The temptation to go on and on 
quoting what he said and wrote 
about other authors is very great. 
But I will withstand it, save for 
a very few concessions. 

I recall his ardent championship 
of Longfellow, and his bitterness 
against those who spoke contempt- 
60 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

uously of Longfellow's flowing 
rhyme and rhythm, as if his thought 
must be less noble because it could 
be understood without a "key"; 
and as if his poetry must have been 
effortless because it could be mem- 
orized so easily. 

" Nobody knows any better than 
I do," Mr. Riley said to me, " how 
hard it is to write such measures 
as ' The Psalm of Life. 5 " 

He could not understand why 
Browning, if he believed in the 
worth of his message to the world, 
was not more concerned than he 
seemed to be that so small part 
of the world could comprehend it. 

Of all his literary loves, though, 
none was so strong as that he had 
for Burns : 

" Sweet singer that I lo'e the maist 
O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste 
I smacket bairn-lips ower the taste 
0* hinnied Sang." 
61 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Burns in verse, and Dickens in 
prose. " Am just reading," he wrote 
in April, '99, " the primest, finest, 
most mellerest, ripest and juiciest 
of all novels ever writ! Wonder 
if you've run acrost it yet? It is 
called c David Copperfield.' * Ah, 
mountain pine and stately Kentish 
spire ! Ye have one tale to tell ! ' 

His feeling for Poe is so well 
known that I offer no comment on 
it here, save such as may throw 
for some persons a new light on 
that affinity: James Whitcomb Riley 
came into the world on the day that 
Edgar Allan Poe went out of it. 
To a mind so sensitive, so imagina- 
tive as Riley's, this could not be 
without more significance than a 
mere coincidence. 



62 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



VI 

♦fT CANNOT recall with any ex- 
■■ actitude the " first beginnings " 
of the compilation called " Riley 
Love Lyrics"; that is, whether we 
thought first of the volume and 
then of the illustrator, or first of 
the illustrator and then of the 
volume. 

Mr. William B. Dyer was one of 
the first — if not the very first in- 
deed! — in Chicago to open a studio 
for the " new " photography which 
was so wonderfully different from 
the " old." He had made many 
studies of me, and of people I knew, 
and I was deeply interested in his 
art. It was probably my sugges- 
tion that his pictures would beau- 
tifully illustrate certain poems (he 
is a very modest gentleman, and 



REMINISCENCES OF 

I am sure he didn't suggest it), and 
it may well have been I who thought 
first of Riley poems. 

We sent down to Mr. Riley a 
number of Mr. Dyer's pictures, 
with a plan for the proposed book. 

"At once/' he wrote, "I'll take the 
lovely pictures to the B — M's — this im- 
mediate now. All I can say is in the assur- 
ance of my consent to the artist's scheme 
should my publishers indorse same. So 
please inform the gifted man of my hale 
appreciation of his work, which I fervently 
trust may meet the like estimate of the 
publishers. Would advise you to write 
them, as an appeal from you to them would 
far outweigh the very heftiest one of mine." 

It was, of course, not my " ap- 
peal " at all, but his enthusiasm 
for the project and Mr. Dyer's 
capability for it that enlisted the 
publishers. And in a short while 
work on the volume was begun. I 
believe I selected the poems — sub- 
64 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY" 

ject to Mr. Riley's approval and 
to Mr. Dyer's acceptance of them 
as illustratable with a camera. And 
for further contribution, I posed 
for some of the pictures and acted 
as consulting " authority " on the 
types to be used for others. That 
is not to say that I presumed to 
offer Mr. Dyer any artistic sug- 
gestions — only, to help him from 
time to time with guesses as to 
what I thought would best express 
the poet's idea. When I couldn't 
guess, I asked the poet. Witness: 

" My Dear Lady Glendower: 

"As best I can here do I answer your 
order of questions — only wishing you had 
asked more, and more difficult ones. 1st. 
The fair girl whose father called her in and 
shut the door was twelve years of age, 
perhaps, and the dark, eerie child was 
younger by two years, about. (Mighty 
glad that poem is selected, as it has always 
been a favorite one, though why it is I 
don't know, any more than I don't know 
65 



REMINISCENCES OF 

whence it sprung or what the little change- 
ling mystical bit is all about.) 

" 2d. I think it may be either a man or 
a woman who prays ' Let not this New Year 
be as happy as the old! ' It's a mature, 
sensible lover, man or woman, with no 
golf-links background. 

u 3d. * His Vigil ' is the same married man 
who utterly loves his wife in sonnet ' When 
She Comes Home/ No, he is not ill — but 
sick of himself, and wants to be simply 
tolerated, all in the dark and the silence, 
by his divine superior, her human hand 
holding his own. 

" 4th. * The Passing of a Heart ' is a noble 
woman lied to by the husband who proves 
(very naturally) the opposite of all he 
promised ere they were one. — John Hay 
has a distitch som'er's which wisely bids 
the maiden: — * Marry whomsoever thou 
wilt, and thou wilt find thou hast married 
somebody else/ 

u The old savant will be delighted to an- 
swer any question you can skeer up. Just 
as easy to him as it was to Merlin when 
the wily Vivian inquired ' Prithee, O sire 
adorable, why is 9 t the sweetest love must 



(r^Avtci^-Aw — , c«-~- a+<w Wp.— cJ*^c <^ &L<uj"fcr' 




(3 ^° 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

needs seem e'en the saddest? ' and lie 
promptly answered, with his twinkless 
eyes fixed full on space, * Because God 
loves the Irish.' 

"Wid a wurrld av bewilderin' wishes, 
u Your always grateful 

"Jamesy O'Reilly." 

It was this " Jamesy w who wrote 
to me always in the gayest moods. 
u Dear F. A./' another of his letters 
begins, " which here means Fellow 
American: 

" Till this blessed minute I've not had 
the chanst to thank yez for the lavish 
bunch of papers. [Copies of our weekly 
containing his poem ' Billy Miller's Circus 
Show,' for the publication of which he 
seemed as eager as if it were his first appear- 
ance in print.] Sure they were daisies — 
wid shamrocks mixed amongst 'urn thick 
as the sthars be curdled in The Milky Way! 
An' thank an' praise ye likewise for the 
wrappers of the same — wid every con- 
vainince on 'urn but the paste an' postage- 
67 



REMINISCENCES OF 

stamps! So like yer own foresight ted 
thoughtf ulness ! 

"As ever your grateful, fraternal and eternal 
"Jainesy O'Reilly." 

In the margin of this letter is the 
following: 

" Kate Shane, the coquette iv all Dayton, 
Heart-struck wid a strange palpitaatin', 
Called Docther McGrothin, 
Who said it were nawthin' 
But somethin' the gyurl had been aitin' ! " 



68 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



VII 

^■^HERE are many memories of 
VU him which I find it hard to 
group. And yet, because each one 
of them is characteristic and illu- 
minative, I cannot bear to leave 
them out. 

I often asked him for verification 
or denial of certain stories about 
him. One that came to me was 
that he had been a guest of Mrs. 
Humphrey Ward's at a time when 
that distinguished lady was much 
interested in the mysteries of the 
planchette or ouija-board. The 
story ran that Mr. Riley, on being 
asked from whom he would like a 
message, promptly replied " Charles 
Lamb." (I should have said some- 
thing about his great fondness for 
Lamb.) Thereupon he put his hands 



REMINISCENCES OF 

on the little table, as directed, and 
it began to move about among the 
letters of the alphabet painted on the 
underlying board. To Mrs. Ward's 
mortification, it picked out a string 
of consonants from which no pos- 
sible word could be guessed. She 
apologized to Mr. Riley for the 
ouija's misbehavior. He looked sur- 
prised. " Why," he murmured, 
"that's all right. Lamb stuttered, 
you know." 

To this Mr. Riley pleaded guilty. 

Another story, a very touching 
one, had it that in his young man- 
hood Mr. Riley, desperately enam- 
ored of Ella Wheeler (now Mrs. 
Wilcox) and failing to win her, 
vowed himself to celibacy. He lis- 
tened attentively till I got to the 
end. Then: "That's very inter- 
esting," he declared, enthusiastically; 
" and it's all perfectly true — except 
that I never saw the lady! " 
70 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

This was what the children call 
" a naughty story"; for he had 
seen the lady. But perhaps that 
was just his way of evading a 
question I had no right to ask. 

Once I ventured to ask him why 
he didn't write more sonnets. 

" Because/ 5 he answered, dryly, 
" the only people who read sonnets 
expect presentation copies." 

He fumbled in his pockets one 
day when I was talking with him, 
and brought out a bit of paper. 

" Here's something I've been 
plumbing on," he said. " Like to 
have it tried on you? " 

It was "Old Glory"! And how 
he read it! I wanted to know what 
he was going to do with it. " Oh, 
nothing, yet," he assured me. It 
was not polished to his satisfaction. 
I must have had the unbelievable 
temerity to ask him for it. Be- 
cause he wrote me: 
71 



REMINISCENCES OF 

" As to the ' Old Glory * poem, I'm proud 
you want it, though I can't surrender it 
to the world at large just yet. In fact, 
it still remains unfinished, and when I 
shall be able to complete it to my satis- 
faction I've no idea under the heavens." 

And later, replying to my letter 
when I had seen the poem and a 
beautiful article about the poet, 
in The Atlantic Monthly, he said: 
"Dear my Favorite Author: 

" Yes, it was lovely of The Atlantic and the 
peerless Carman to set me forth as they 
so generously have! And I've been trying 
to thank them, though I fear all too stam- 
meringly to be clearly understood — as 
the measure of my appreciation and grati- 
tude was, and is, quite beyond just expres- 
sion. As to the poem, your praise of that 
demands like acknowledgment, though I 
spare you now — but must tell you that 
the girth of the check for it would seem 
to endorse your own exalted estimate of 
its worth. So that, as Mrs. Browning only 
could express it, 

" c I stand too high for astonishment/ 

" God bless us, every one! " 
72 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

" Say ' Illileo,' ' I urged him, 
one evening when we were sitting 
out under the trees and something 
had brought to my mind his haunt- 
ingly lovely, richly musical lines 
in that poem. 

" Don't know it/' he answered. 

" I do," I replied. " Go ahead— 
I'll prompt you." 

"I'll bet you do!" he chuckled; 
and began. 

He did know it. And as he pro- 
ceeded, the dripping, honey-golden 
lusciousness of his own verse en- 
chanted him as it was enchanting 
me. The beauty, the warmth, the 
music of his voice was all too inde- 
scribable. 

" 'And I held you in my bosom, as the 
husk may hold the fruit.' " 

" God! " he said, fervently, " that 
is a beautiful line! . . . You know 
how I mean that? " 
73 



REMINISCENCES OF 

I did. 

" Many people wouldn't/ 5 he went 
on, plaintively. 

" No. . . . Do you recall in Henry 
van Dyke's reminiscences of Tenny- 
son that once when reading aloud 
to Dr. van Dyke, Tennyson said 
something similar? The line at 
which he exclaimed was : ' The 
league-long rollers broke in thunder 
on the beach.' And as Tennyson 
boomed it forth in his great voice 
the effect was truly superb." 

" Didn't van Dyke understand? " 

"Oh, yes!" 

" My God! No poet is ever com- 
placent. How can anybody think 
it? The torment of the difference 
we feel between the thing visioned 
and the thing transcribed is more 
than enough to keep us in hell. 
And when you do find that you've 
got a glint of the real glory in some- 
thing you've done, do you get 
74 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

complacent? No! You feel as if 
the Lord had sent it to you, all 
faceted and flawless, and let you 
set it in with your own fumblings. 
Proud? No! You're just a'mighty 
grateful! " 

His understanding of human 
nature was introspective and in- 
tuitive, I think — seldom, if ever, 
deductive and analytical. He did 
not readily establish points of easy 
contact with other people, and he 
was not happy with strangers. He 
seemed afraid to be himself with 
them, for fear they would not under- 
stand, and his sensitiveness was so 
great that he could scarcely have 
borne misunderstanding. I am sure 
he was right in his feeling about 
this; though often one wished he 
were not so loath to " be met." 
He hated " lionizing," not because 
he didn't like being a lion — for I 
am convinced he did — but because 
75 



REMINISCENCES OF 

of the dismal inability of most per- 
sons to treat lions in any way which 
does not put them and keep them 
at a disadvantage. He knew he 
was not at his best when " lionized " 
— indeed, that he was quite at his 
worst. And no one can blame him 
for shying from the experience. 

" I stand on one foot/' he com- 
plained to me, whimsically, " and 
then on the other foot. And I 
don't know what to say." 

His intimates understood this so 
well that they seldom or never tried 
to show him off. 

But I recall one occasion when a 
few of his closest friends conspired 
against him in behalf of a very 
worthy candidate for the honor of 
Riley's acquaintance. This gentle- 
man was a physician in southern 
Illinois. He had just published a 
charming book of boy life in the 
country, rich in such human nature 
76 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

as Riley knew and loved best. He 
was the quietest, shyest person im- 
aginable, but he had mustered cour- 
age to come to Indianapolis in the 
hope of seeing Mr. Riley, whom he 
had idolized from afar. 

I was one of those who plotted 
to introduce this gentleman into a 
small circle of friends with whom 
Mr. Riley was so much at ease 
that he might forget the presence 
of one stranger. His publishers 
were party to the plot, and the 
episode was " staged " in the private 
office of Mr. Bobbs. 

The gentleman on pilgrimage was 
introduced; and then everyone 
worked mightily to start talk that 
might lure Mr. Riley from his silence. 
But he was like the Tar-Baby: "he 
kep' on sayin' nothin\" 

I cannot remember how or why 
we talked of Hamlet. Perhaps some 
one was playing it in Indianapolis. 
77 



REMINISCENCES OF 

But I know we were getting rather 
desperate. 

" I'd like/' someone said, "to see 
Hamlet played by a fair-haired Dane. 
I'm tired of brunette melancholy." 

" Or by a fat man," another inter- 
posed. " Hamlet himself says he is 
fat and scant of breath." 

And so on. It was all very forced 
and foolish; but the Tar-Baby had 
us almost hysterically self-conscious. 
Finally someone was emboldened to 
abandon strategy and lead a direct 
attack. 

" How would you like to see 
' Hamlet ' played, Mr. Riley? " he 
asked. 

Mr. Riley appeared to consider. 

" I'd like to see it played by a 
picked nine," he replied, gravely. 

That was his total contribution. 
But there have been pilgrims to 
shrines of greatness who have fared 
worse. 

78 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



VIII 

♦IWJILEY was the poet of child- 
■l\ hood; but unless I grievously 
misread him, he was not fond of 
children in the way that we are who 
love to have them around. He 
delighted in his memories of his own 
childhood and in fancies, whimsies, 
those memories inspired; but on 
the occasions when I knew him in 
the actual presence of flesh-and-blood 
youngsters, he was inclined to be 
easily disturbed by their behavior. 

I think his vivid recollections of 
how he felt when he was a little 
boy made him critical of the attitude 
of most grown-ups toward small 
persons; and he may have been 
fearful of seeming to childish minds 
no better than the rest of the bungle- 
79 



REMINISCENCES OF 

some adult world. He talked to 
me once of how it made him shrink 
and shrivel to see people pounce 
at a strange child and expect instant 
intimacy from it. He respected the 
child-mind far too much for that. 

I have seen him sit in a room with 
a shy little girl and appear not to 
notice her; but to keep juggling or 
" palming " a half - dollar — in a 
" now - you - see - it - now - you - 
don't " way — until she was beside 
him, trying to see where it went to 
when it went away. Nor would 
he presume upon that show of in- 
tellectual interest, to put his arm 
around her or chuck her under the 
chin — let alone to tell her, in the 
uncouth jocosity of persons who are 
sure they "love children/' that he 
was going to steal her. 

He had a deep sense, I am sure, of 
the dignity and aloofness of young 
souls. He knew how tolerant they 
80 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

have to be of parents and other 
elders. Youth, far from thawing 
his shyness, seemed rather to increase 
it. If he was ever at his best when 
talking with children, those were 
times I had not the happiness 
to share. Yet children felt the 
witchery of his personality, and I 
have known them to sit spellbound 
by his talk with their elders. 

One Sunday evening so early in 
my visits to Indianapolis that " Ed " 
was still a small boy, Elva Eitel and 
little Ed and I were returning to 
their home from having spent some 
enchanted hours at " Aunt Mamie's" 
with €€ Uncle Jim." I daresay Elva 
and I did not leave many pauses — 
we seldom did — but Ed was .very 
quiet, even for him. 

As we neared home he said: 

" Do you know what I've been 
thinking? " 

We didn't. 

81 



REMINISCENCES OF 

" I've been thinking that the most 
fascinating thing in the whole world 
is to hear Uncle Jim talk." 

We agreed with him. 

Yet, not once all evening had his 
Uncle Jim directed, a fragment of 
conversation " at " Ed. 

This may have been instinct with 
Mr. Riley, or it may have been 
memory, or it may have been canny, 
mature wisdom. But whatever it 
was, I often wish more people had it. 

It was a strange relationship: 
he valued them not for what they 
gave him of pleasure or understand- 
ing, but for all that " wonderland of 
wayward childhood " they helped 
him to recall; and they valued him 
because he seemed to take them for 
granted, as if they were grown-ups, 
making no insulting condescensions 
to them, but allowing them to form 
their own opinions of his worth. 

The first of his books that he gave 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

me has these lines of special inscrip- 
tion: 

" Wonderland of wayward Childhood! 
What 
An easy, breezy realm of summer calm 
And dreamy gleam and gloom and bloom 

and balm 
Thou art ! The Lotus-Land the poet sung, 
It is the Child- World while the heart beats 
young." 

And in the proem to that volume 
he sang: 

"O Child-World: After this world— just 
as when 
I found you first sufficed 
My soulmost need — if I found you again, 
With all my childish dreams so realized, 
I should not be surprised." 

I wrote, once on a time, for 
The Book Buyer, a little article 
about Riley's poems of childhood, 
and when it was ready for the 
printers I sent it to him for correc- 
tions or suggestions. 
83 



REMINISCENCES OF 

" Of course," he wrote, " I approve the 
enclosed pages of praises of my boyhood 
muse — though you re a gentler one. Voice- 
less, therefore, in awe of reverence I bow. 
Nor think my attitude less worshipful 
when you find my pencil-marks, so 
delicately trenching on your lines at times. 

" On page 7, upper page, your comment 
reminds me, too, that you might find for 
it a fit quotation from a little poem in * Ar- 
mazindy' vol., I think. I forget its exact 
title, but it's about a ' Dear child-hearted 
Woman that is dead ' — and God hears her 
spirit whisper, just as He has made a 
stately angel of her, and in a twinkling she 
is a little child" 

His ability, in story-telling, to 
personate a little boy was more 
than consummate histrionism; there 
was something psychic in it — as if 
the little boy he used to be came 
back at times, not only in the 
poet's mind, but in his looks and 
voice and movements. I have heard 
few things more wonderful than 
84 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

his narration of " Bud's Bear Story/' 
It seemed to me as if I could see 
the workings of Bud's mind, as he 
conceived it point by point — that 
marvellous tale of the little boy 
in the woods, who, being chased by 
a bear, " dumb " a tree, the bear 
pursuing. " Bud's " excitement as 
his hero cc haf to stay up in the 
tree — all night — " with the bear 
below going " Wooh ! woo — wooh! " 
was all evident in his face. Then — ! 
never, until in that other Child- 
World I come up with him again, 
shall I see anything like the expres- 
sion on Bud's face, when he thought 
how to save his hero. 

" The old Bear finds the Little Boy's gun, 

you know, 
' At's on the ground. — (An' it ain't broke 

at all — 
I 'ist said that!) An' so the old Bear 

think 
He'll take the gun an 5 shoot the Little 
Boy:-" 

85 



REMINISCENCES OF 

But shoots himself instead ! 

One often feels the authors of 
adventure stories caught in traps 
of their own contriving; but one 
seldom meets another so deliciously 
frank as " Bud." 

Another masterpiece of what I 
can only call reincarnation was the 
boy who was not going to say his 
prayers " to-night, ner to-morrow 
night, ner the nex' night. An' 
after that, if nothin' happens, I 
ain't ever gom* to say 'em.' 5 But 
the nature of the thing he was 
pretty sure would happen filled 
him with a terror which his bravado 
could scarcely overcome. 

How much he lived in that land 
of long-ago, I suppose no one fully 
realized. 

I remember telling him one day 
some boyish thing told me by his 
only nephew, " Ed " — Edmund H. 
Eitel, , for some years his uncle's 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

secretary, and now his literary ex- 
ecutor and his biographer. The 
poet was listening to me — but from 
far away. When I paused, he mur- 
mured, abstractedly: 

" Who told you? 'Hum'?" 

" Hum" was what he called his 
younger brother Humboldt, dead, 
then, for many years. 

And I can never forget the pas- 
sionate intensity he expressed of 
longing for his^mother. 

" She has been dead," he once 
said to me, " for more than twenty 
years. Yet there are times when 
I want her so it seems to me I shall 
die." 

His sisters told me a multitude 
of stories of his youth. But I shall 
not try to retell them. They be- 
long to the " Life " which lEdmund 
Eitel is writing with such love and 
care and understanding. In these 
modestly offered pages I am keep- 
87 



REMINISCENCES OF 

ing strictly to my own recollections. 
All over the country there are — 
there must be! — other persons with 
other recollections, and other rich 
hoards of his letters. To every one 
of us, it may be that he showed a 
different phase of himself; the im- 
pressions of one may even seem 
to contradict those of others. His 
was such infinite variety! And, of 
course, each of us saw him through 
a different kind of lens, according 
to our different personalities. It 
is my hope that never may I seem 
to say " Thus he was " — only, 
" Thus he appeared to me." 



88 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



IX 

Jn^R. RILEY'S readings of his 

JL IS J own works were, as everybody 
knows, in very great demand 
throughout the country. It is sur- 
prising how much of that sort of 
thing he did; because he disliked 
travel and he heartily disliked being 
on a platform. He never overcame 
his stage fright, and used to suffer 
acutely from it — quaking nerves, 
stomach affected, and other rack- 
ing ills. " Getting ready for the 
road/ 5 he writes, "and gosh! how 
I dread it!" 

"My Favorite Author," one letter be- 
gins, " I fear will not get as worthy a letter 
as deserved this time, — for, to save the soul 
o' me, I can find no gasp of time from the 
incessant havoc of travel and breathless 
stress of having to catch the next train 
89 



REMINISCENCES OF 

for some place else! And that letter of 
yours was such a good one, that a reply 
less masterful simply isn't fair to either of 
us, God knows. But what is there left 
a fellow between trains — poised on the 
crossties of one track, wildly trying to 
catch one train while he dodges another, 
and wishing he were in Chicago, where every- 
one walks — save, doubtless, the walking 
delegate? Both at Peoria and Galesburg 
your friends were most pleasantly mani- 
fest — so strikingly and helpfully so, that 
at both points of our combine I wanted 
them right along through the rest of the 
tour ... * And so we plough along/ as 
the fly said to the ox." 

He once told me how he happened 
to bring into his repertory that 
narrative which Mark Twain called 
the supreme example of American 
humor, giving it as evidence in 
support of his contention that the 
charm of American humor lies not 
in the matter but in the manner. 
As for matter, that story is probably 
90 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

the hoariest " chestnut " in the 
whole category of time-honored 
jokes. But as Riley told it, it 
has become a classic. Briefly the 
story is that of a soldier whose leg 
was shot off. He entreated a com- 
rade to carry him back to the hos- 
pital-tent; the comrade complied 
and was carrying him pickaback, 
when another shell whizzed past 
carrying off the wounded man's 
head. 

The comrade, unaware of what 
had happened, was halted by his 
Colonel. " Where are you going 
with that ?'\th.e officer demanded. 

' To the hospital; his leg's shot 
off." 

" His leg ? " the Colonel thundered; 
"his food's shot off!" 

The soldier laid his burden down 
and looked at it reproachfully. " He 
told me it was his leg," he explained 
to the Colonel. 

91 



REMINISCENCES OF 

The way Mr. Riley came to use 
this ancient story on the platform 
was this: He and Bill Nye were on 
a reading tour in the South. The 
weather was oppressively warm, their 
engagements were many, they had 
a great deal of travel and very little 
rest, and neither man was in robust 
health. All, however, would have 
been well enough had it not been for 
the reception committees. On the 
humorists' arrival in each town they 
were met by a delegation of influen- 
tial citizens chosen with reference 
to their local repute for humor. 
Then, instead of going to the hotel 
where the weary " troopers " might 
rest, " low-necked hacks " were com- 
mandeered and the strangers were 
driven out to see " the high iron 
bridge/' by which general descrip- 
tion Mr. Riley was wont to charac- 
terize the average small city's point 
of interest. All the way to the 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

" bridge "and back the local humor- 
ists regaled their guests with stories 
of rare old vintages. And if the 
guests did not laugh fit to kill it 
was plain to see that they would be 
put down as having swelled heads. 
So they laughed, though it did 
indeed almost kill them, until one 
day Mr. Riley struck. He was hot, 
he was tired, he was a-wearied of 
high iron bridges, and go a-riding 
in that inevitable sea-going hack he 
would not. But Mr. Nye, unable to 
contemplate the local humorists' 
dismay, went with them. The after- 
noon wore on toward six o'clock 
before he returned. 

Mr. Riley had written a lot of 
letters, rested himself, and was feel- 
ing so fine as to be full of mischief. 
At sight of Nye's tired, white face 
Riley was moved to wickedness. 
He tried to think which of all the 
hoary tales they heard in every town 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Nye could least endure to hear again. 
The man with his head shot off stood 
out prominent in the record of their 
sufferings; so he began to tell it 
to Nye, faithfully mimicking the 
manner of those local humorists who 
had so strange a genius of telling a 
tale wrong-side-before that what- 
ever pith or point it might have had 
was undiscoverable. The way Riley 
told that story sent Nye into 
paroxysms of laughter, and it was 
he who persuaded the astonished 
Riley to try this on the platform. 

He never told it twice the same. 
At each telling he seemed to have 
some new inspiration. I heard it 
many, many times and came as 
near knowing it by heart as one 
could come to knowing a thing of 
such infinite variety. I remember 
one night in Indianapolis when 
Mr. Riley was reading in English's 
Theatre. It was his first public 
94 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

appearance in his home town in a 
number of years, and he had given 
his services to raise money for a 
monument to General Harrison. 
Indianapolis was greatly excited over 
the event; people were in line before 
the ticket-window as early as two 
o'clock in the morning — seven hours 
before the sale of tickets was to be- 
gin. Mr. Riley suffered augmented 
agonies from stage-fright; his nerv- 
ousness caused him a great deal 
of trouble with his weak heart, and, 
among other ways of expressing it- 
self, managed to bring on severe 
nose-bleeding. To know something 
of what he suffered was to suffer with 
him. I was in a box with his sisters, 
and we were all nervous. When 
Mr. Riley came to the story of the 
wounded soldier, of which by that 
time all his auditors had heard so 
much, we followed the familiar nar- 
rative point by point, anxious that 
95 



REMINISCENCES OF 

he should get all the best points in. 
Alas, one of the funniest touches of 
all he left out entirely. We were 
so sorry. But, listen! What was 
he doing? The story was nearing 
its end, and the audience was con- 
vulsed with merriment. When 
every one had laughed until he 
cried, until his sides ached with 
shaking, until he felt that he could 
laugh no more, Mr. Riley went back 
to the beginning of the narrative 
and told it all over again, putting in 
the excruciatingly funny point he 
had missed before. And on the 
second telling his audience waxed 
hysterical. 

I recall this incident because it 
is so illustrative of his kind of humor, 
which depended not at all on the 
surprisingness of what he had to say, 
but altogether on the inimitable way 
he had of saying it. 

One never tired of the things he 
96 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

did. So far from feeling satisfied 
because you had once heard him 
recite " Good -by, Jim! Take keer 
yerself," one hearing of it only made 
you the more eager to hear it again 
and again. You might know the 
poem by heart; you might have 
heard him recite it fifty times; 
but it was always as fresh to you as 
the morning dew, and the more 
you had had of it the more you 
hungered for. 

Mary Riley Payne, the younger 
of the poet's sisters, has a great deal 
of the same sort of whimsical humor 
which her brother Jim had. And 
it was Mary who expressed, in 
comic paraphrase of a then current 
coon-song, an opinion which may be 
heretical on the Isle of Man, but 
is strict orthodoxy in many other 
places. Mr. Riley had given a read- 
ing in Tremont Temple, Boston, to 
an audience which jammed that 
97 



REMINISCENCES OF 

ample auditorium to its very ridge- 
pole. Not only the populace, but 
all the Olympians were there. Julia 
Ward Howe introduced him, and it 
was an occasion, even for Tremont 
Street. On the same evening, Mr. 
Hall Caine read in Boston to an 
audience, we were told, numbering 
less than a score. 

"Oh, well!" Mary said. "What's 
wonderful in that? There's only 
one of Jim in all the world — and 
Hall Caines c look alike to me! ' " 





Hffil JHBBBH^BB^B ippyww 












^g^^^i 








^ • >• v wW' .< . mm 








% SH -"-' Mwifil 



From the Sargent Portrait 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 



^T'HERE was indeed only " one of 
VU Jim in all the world." I have 
heard the sentiment expressed in 
many ways, but I have often thought 
I like Mary's way best. 

I want to tell what he was like 
as I saw him and knew him, but I 
find myself wondering to what I 
may compare him so that those 
who never saw him may understand. 

His portraits tell how he looked 
to people he passed or people he 
met in an ordinary way. But with 
what similes shall one tell how he 
looked when he was telling Bud's 
bear story or teasing Hector Fuller 
about " them molasses," or reading 
" Bianca," or reciting the veteran's 
tale of the man with his leg shot off, 
or listening from out the far-away 
99 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Child-World when he asked: " Who 
told you? 'Hum?'" 

There was only one of him, but 
that one was so various! "How 
many of my selves are dead? M he 
questions in one of his poems. But 
however many he may have felt 
behind him, he had at all times 
enough left him to furnish a regiment 
of ordinary men with personality. 

I hope I have not conveyed the 
impression that the moods which I 
have quoted were ever-present with 
him, nor even that they were his 
most frequent states of mind. They 
would have been far less 'witching 
had they been perpetual, or easy of 
access. In truth, they were so far 
from evocable at will — either his 
will or the wish of others — that they 
were all the more precious when the 
gods of the soul's winds blew favor- 
ing breaths. 

So sensitive a creature was prey 
100 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

to ten thousand torments, from 
within and from without, as well as 
attuned to ten thousand delights. 

His body, as completely as his 
spirit, seemed to present infinite 
" exposed nerve " surfaces, which 
shot tingling pain through him when 
they were ever so lightly brushed. 
He was often irritable; and his 
irritability had a tendency to aban- 
don the sullen defensive and be- 
come actively, stingingly mean. 
What he said and did at such times 
caused him agonies of remorse after- 
wards. I can never forget some of 
the things he said to me about 
this terrible contrition he was for- 
ever suffering. It was one of the 
major tragedies of his temperament. 

He was so sensitive to self-criti- 
cism that I think he had less sus- 
ceptibility than the average to criti- 
cism from without. 

When his " Rubaiyat of Doc 5 
101 



REMINISCENCES OF 

Sifers " was appearing in The Cen- 
tury, some tender paragrapher in a 
California weekly howled: "That 
plague of bucolic imbecility, James 
Whitcomb Riley, has broke loose 
in The Century again." Something 
in one of his letters made me think 
he had seen this and been hurt by 
it. I ventured upon such consola- 
tion as my twenty-year-old bitter- 
ness with the crass world could 
muster. I daresay he was much 
amused, but he did not say so. 

"This is no letter at all," he wrote, 
" only a long-distance clapping of hands 
over your lovely * Revelation of Christopher 9 
[a short story, just published] — yes, and 
the fine, strong, heartening letter I'd been 
silently applauding since its inspired crea- 
tion on the 19th; for even a full day 
prior to its arrival the spirit of it smote 
me like a sort of anonymous glory. Of 
course I shall never be able to thank you 
for it — though certain I am that you 
already know the righteous sense of my 
102 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

appreciation. But you must not think 
it is * the oft-recurring gnat 9 — the rabidly 
erudite little critic you so recently was 
afflicted with — that vexes me seriously 
at all. I'm the fellow that gets after me 
the most effectively and relentlessly. Now, 
however, I'm at peace even with myself 
again, and no end of good things are com- 
ing my way. Wish I could see you and 
talk some of 'em over at you! " 

Another time he wrote: 

" I am still so at sea under such stress 
of weather; my mind (such as it is) remains, 
as then, largely chaotic. Fact is, the youth 
and elasticity is gone clean out of it, and it 
now seems to fit the demand like the slack, 
limp lasting of an old shoe. Have been 
trying to rest it, but the graceless thing 
is beyond remedy, I really believe. In 
meantime, how flourishes your own art- 
labors? Can you yet, as Miss Murfree 
said to me jocosely of her sister [" Charles 
Egbert Craddock "] — ' write a novel with 
your hat on and a parasol under your 
arm '? " 

How shall one make plain to 
103 



REMINISCENCES OF 

any contented, corn-fed citizen the 
super-tragedy of that " slack, limp " 
mind and the feeling that " youth 
and elasticity is gone clean out of 
it "? If one has never thrilled to 
the wonder-workings of such a mind, 
never known the magic which evoked 

" The music of the laughing lip, the lustre 
of the eye; 
The childish faith in fairies and Alad- 
din's magic ring — 

The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in 
everything. — 

When life was like a story, holding neither 
sob nor sigh, 

In the golden, olden glory of the days 
gone by," 

how shall he know the desolation of 
having forgot the " Sesame "? Nor 
is the despair of each lapse less 
abysmal because in that tiny, un- 
invaded corner of the mind's king- 
dom where a remnant of memory 
is still regnant, there is a counsellor 
104 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

to remind one that on other occa- 
sions he seemed equally conquered, 
yet came forth in triumph. " Ah, 
yes! but I was younger, then. 
This time my exile is for all eternity." 

If it was disappointing to his 
family and friends that he was 
unable, at times, to unlock the 
gates of that world where he was a 
fairy Prince-Charming — youthful 
and all-conquering — what must it 
not have been to him to stand out- 
side, an old man in a beggar's 
cloak? 

If ever I was impatient with him 
on that account, he knows, now, 
what my contrition is — and has 
forgiven me. 

His contrition was always charm- 
ing, and he never withheld it. 

" It was my c plumbing ' with one 

phrase of [the preface of] your Golden 

Year that scarred its grammar. You had 

said that Mr. Riley (himself) ' might 

105 



REMINISCENCES OF 

say " waller in " 9 and I tried to correct 
the inference as to your suggestion that my 
grammar was no better than my old 
farmer's. So it seems, after all, you were 
right, and God knows the pang it gives 
me to admit it." 

His sensitiveness to being thought 
colloquial by restriction and not 
by choice, was very considerable. 
Whether people liked or did not 
like what he did, he wanted them 
to know that it was done with 
painstaking effort by a man who 
expressed much in homely or child- 
simple language not because that 
was his only speech, but because 
he had an artist's sense of the way 
certain ideas should be set forth. 
He had a scholarly knowledge of 
verse forms and a facile command 
of them, equalled by few poets of 
any day. He used words with the 
artistry of a lapidary; and he was 
as much at ease with the richest, 
106 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

most sensuous words as Swinburne, 
while commanding the simplest with 
a mastery like that of Burns. 

When my first novel was in manu- 
script, he read it with painstaking 
particularity, and wrote me a letter 
thousands of words in length, con- 
taining his comments and sugges- 
tions and corrections. I remember 
discussing some of these with Pro- 
fessor William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, 
who was much interested in Mr. 
Riley's attitude toward certain 
words. Sometimes one could share 
his feeling about words, and again 
it was not possible; but it was al- 
ways interesting to hear how words 
affected him. For instance: " Don't 
use trudge! it is a horrid, patro- 
nizing word"; and "countryside is 
an abomination, weakly smacking 
of petty poetry "; and so on. Now, 
" trudge " is not a patronizing word; 
but he had an aversion from it. 
107 



REMINISCENCES OF 

And there is no equivalent for 
" countryside " in certain usages. 
But he was as sensitive to the im- 
pression words made on him as 
the master-musician is to sounds. 

For his dialect poetry he kept note- 
books as accurate as a scientist's. 
Not only was the euphony of the 
dialectics a careful study with him, 
but he knew why some children, 
for instance, say " thist " instead 
of " just," and why others say 
" ist." There was nothing hap- 
hazard in any of his work. The 
philologist of the future, studying 
Middle-Western colloquialisms of the 
late-nineteenth century, may depend 
on Riley's transcription of them 
as the most exact ever made. 

" Yesterday," one of his letters begins, 
" I dined merrily with the sister and her 
Eitelian family; and along with the dessert 
came Ed's and Elizabeth's letters from 
you. Nor could the exacting literary pep- 
108 



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tics of the epicurean old-fool uncle find 
but one vaguest savor in either missive 
to be just a trifle squeamish over — i.e.: 
in one of them you said you never punned 
— yet with a brazen pun both before and 
after the assertion. And then — all to 
myself — I sniffed and said, 'Ho-ho!' And 
then — employing the same discreet voice — 
I said ' Ah-ha! ' as one belike whose slowly 
wakening mind * beat time to nothing in 
his head from some odd corner of the brain.' 
And then ... Of course the folks never 
knew or cared about some hasty note I 
gravely set down on an envelope; but it 
was: — 
In jousts of old, with couchant quill, 

A poet and compiless met — 

The verse't of punsters ever yet! 
And punned, and laughed just fit to kill! — 
And — fact is — she's a laughlin' still! " 

He loved to play with words — 
as when he said he had gloated over 
something " till my epigloatis is 
'most bust." And he had a fancy 
for such incongruous associations 
as when he assured me that another 
109 



REMINISCENCES OF 

something was " what Theocritus 
would call ' a peach.' : 

After my first book was published 
he wrote: 

" For a long, sad while I was afraid 
you meant to shy out of it [authorship] 
and be lured into being simply the pro- 
ducer of the ever-prone-to-fly-upward-and- 
wink-outward scintillations of the day and 
hour. Now, you see, you're a 'bedient 
child of the gods; and, as such, they'll 
always be good to you — henceforward ever- 
more! Nods and becks and wreathed 
smiles 

As you delight 'em 

Ad infinitum." 

When his Biography began to 
be talked of, and he was directing 
the gathering together of materials 
for it, I was asked to loan his letters 
to me, for copying. He wrote: 

" Thank you for the letters my Biographer 

wants. He has astounded me with his 

collection of like matter from literary friends 

in all corners of the world, it would seem 

110 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

... As to your own, — they have all been 
preserved — most of them in one place of 
security, though some few elsewhere adrift 
are no less secure, and all can be restored, 
if desired, for your Biography! 
A notable lady of letters was she, 
While a man of mere note-able letters was 
he — 
So found the unbiased biographers 
Of these diverse-gifted chirographers! " 

I am sure it is quite unnecessary 
for me to say anything about the 
proportion of gallantry to strict 
truthfulness in all the pretty play- 
fulness of his letters to me. If I 
could have shared their quaintness 
without interpreting their allusions 
to my small, unimportant endeavors, 
I would naturally have preferred 
to do so. But as this was to be in 
no sense a biography, but only an 
impression of Mr. Riley as it was 
my privilege to have seen and known 
him, I hope I am pardoned the per- 
sonal point of view. In that " Life " 
111 



REMINISCENCES OF 

which Edmund Eitel is writing, we 
shall see Riley from a hundred 
viewpoints, and know how infinite 
was his variety. How many of 
his phases I never knew, I can but 
vaguely guess. Those in which he 
revealed himself to me, I have tried 
to describe so that others might 
glimpse something of his ineffable 
charm. 

His was by far the richest per- 
sonality I have ever known. Ac- 
quaintance with him is my supreme 
consolation for what would other- 
wise have been the irreparable loss 
of not having known Charles Lamb. 
As it is, I feel that not only have I 
known something of Riley, but that 
somehow, through knowing him I 
have known Lamb too, and a host 
of other immortals — if, indeed, there 
are a host of them! 

Because he was playful and not 
didactic, he taught me many things. 
112 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

They are not easy to enumerate, 
nor even to define. They are so 
inwoven with the woof-threads of 
my mind's pattern that, although I 
can distinguish them, and hail them 
gratefully, I can scarcely point them 
out to others. I think though that 
I can with strict truthfulness say 
there is never a day when I am not 
conscious of weaving into my living 
some color that he taught me to 
appreciate and how to use. His 
phrases, his melodies are part of 
the fabric of my speech, my thought; 
the cadences of his voice are ever- 
present in my ears. So also it must 
be, I feel sure, with everyone who 
knew him. He was one of those 
who make immortality seem in- 
disputable. 

Not only the thousands who filed 
past to look at him as he lay sleep- 
ing beneath the dome of his State's 
Capitol, but tens of hundreds of 
113 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 

thousands of others throughout the 
land, murmured their good-byes to 
him in words of his own verse. He 
is not dead, whose song lives in so 
many hearts. 

" I cannot say, and I will not say 

That he is dead. — He is just away! 

With a cheery smile and a wave of the 

hand, 
He has wandered into an unknown land, 
And left us dreaming how very fair 
It needs must be, since he lingers there." 



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